


A Picnic with the Red Eye of Jupiter

by elianthos, ellorgast



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Crystal Tokyo Era, Established Relationship, F/M, Fanart, Future Fic, I am not a scientist... I am just a little creature I cannot help this, Old Married Couple, SSMB_2020, Senshi x Shitennou, Space Magic, buckle up kids we're going to space, definitely more fantasy than sci fi, just scenery and banter that's what I've got
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27706393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elianthos/pseuds/elianthos, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellorgast/pseuds/ellorgast
Summary: The great red eye of Jupiter watches over the long-abandoned Io Castle. In the light of Jupiter's ever-churning storms, two old magical beings appear, picnic basket in hand, to spend their anniversary overlooking the best view in the solar system.
Relationships: Kino Makoto/Nephrite
Comments: 28
Kudos: 26
Collections: Senshi & Shitennou Mini Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Senshi x Shitennou Mini Bang 2020. Artwork is by the wonderfully talented Elianthos and writing by Ellorgast.

Where Io Castle perched, on the northernmost side of the moon that shared its name, the expanse of the sky was split neatly between two extremes: Jupiter, an ever-shifting tapestry that seemed to glow and breathe with its own life, and the endless black void of space, dotted with celestial bodies that appeared dim by the light of the gas giant. Even the sun was only a pale, distant glimmer from here, made dimmer still by the proximity of the massive planet that reflected its light.

Of the dozens of moons that orbited the great gas giant of Jupiter, Io was neither the largest nor the brightest. From space, it looked like a ripe pear: pale, acidic green dotted all over with darker shades of green and brown. Larger than Earth's moon, but smaller than Earth, crowned by the massive towering structure of the castle as the only sign that it had ever been inhabited.

There was no atmosphere here. Nothing to create a breath of wind or to bring color to the sky. Only an artificial dome that had stood in place for millennia, blocking out radiation and debris and protecting the ancient castle. Like a ship in a bottle, Io Castle was preserved, frozen in time, drifting silently around the ever-present tempest of Jupiter.

At least, until there was a flash of green on the castle's steps. Without a trace of warning, Io's long solitude had come to an end. Jupiter's little moon had two inhabitants on this day.

The newcomers wore no space suits. No helmets hid their flowing hair. Both had, in fact, come dressed in their best, as though expecting some grand event to be held in the hallowed halls of the castle. Did they imagine a wedding ceremony awaited them up that long staircase? A wedding among ghosts, witnessed only by the grand statues that gazed down upon them?

If the ghosts expected them, they seemed to be in no hurry to join their hosts within the castle. They stood just where they'd flashed into place, hand-in-hand, staring up at the planet Jupiter. It was, from this vantage point, a wall of churning storm, so close that it did not seem to be a planet at all. It was a living painting of unfathomable scale, filling their entire vision from the horizon upward. Hurricanes larger than the entire moon beneath their feet created hypnotic swirls of navy blue and orange. Faint pulses of light in the clouds signalled lightning storms that must have been hundreds of miles in size. Even as they watched, those storms were subtly drifting past them, as Io's orbit brought them in a slow, contemplative journey around Jupiter.

"Hold on. I think I'm going to faint." The first words out of Nephrite's mouth were a jarring contrast to both location and occasion. The tuxedo he wore nearly matched his king's daily uniform in formality: a jacket of deep crimson that gleamed in the twilight glow of the planet overhead, embellished in peach-colored roses to match his wife's gown. His mane of dark hair, normally worn loose over his shoulders, was gathered into a ribbon that was tied low on his back.

"At least put that picnic basket down first. We can't let that wine bottle smash before we drink it." Amusement danced in Makoto's voice as she wound her free arm around Nephrite's. She wore a Grecian-style gown of soft chiffon the color of sunset, with golden clasps pinning the flowing fabric on her shoulders and delicate flowers and leaves adorning the low back.

At one time, teleportation over such a long distance as the one they had just performed would have required her to don her full Sailor Soldier uniform. But she was the Princess of Jupiter, now over 500 years old, and it no longer mattered what she clothed herself in. Besides, this was her home, in a sense. A part of Makoto's heart always belonged to Jupiter, and it in turn always welcomed her home, no matter the distance she must travel for it.

Each of them held a basket, for no picnic between them could ever be contained to just one.

Nephrite did not relinquish his own basket. He did not move a muscle. He was pinned in place by the vast ocean of ever-shifting patterns that loomed above them, filling the sky from horizon to apex. Sulfurous orange and midnight blue crested into cloud-white peaks. Curls and waves folded into shadows of green and crimson.

To see a moon in the sky, that was something. To stand on Luna and see Earth floating above them, that was an experience that Nephrite never quite tired of. But to see the sky entirely blotted out by the sheer vastness of a planet, too immense to even see a fraction of its surface from their vantage point, that was another thing altogether. As long as they faced Jupiter, there was no darkness of space to see. Only the planet. Only the raging storm clouds belonging to a heavenly body that they were not standing on themselves. It was not a sphere, not something that could be considered contained to a single shape. It was a mass, an entity, that looked as though it might at any moment give a sigh and slump overtop of them.

"I thought I was prepared for this." There was something boyish in the way he gazed up at the sight. Like a child realizing that Santa Claus was real after all. Here he was: soldier, commander, esteemed astronomer, valuable diplomat who had settled disputes between entire nations. Over five hundred years old, fluent in several languages, expert in so many scientific fields that entire disciplines had formed and then dissolved under his watch. Here he was, made small and breathless and gaping with wonder at the behemoth before them.

"Nobody is ever prepared for Jupiter," Makoto said simply, enjoying the sight of her flustered husband as much as the view beyond.

That brought a smile to his lips. "She's far too powerful a lady for anyone to handle her."

Makoto leaned into him. The hand that was intertwined with hers automatically moved to slide around her waist as she did so, as though they had practiced this a thousand times. "Never stops you from trying, though."

He pressed a kiss to her cheek. "I like to live dangerously."

She elbowed him gently in the ribs. "No you don't. You like to sit in the dark and stare at the sky for hours with a glass of whisky."

"There is danger in the stars," he said, gesturing up at the impossibly grand celestial body filling the sky. "I ask you, what could be more dangerous than that?"

"Well for one," she countered, taking him by the arm and pivoting the two of them around, "you haven't even looked down yet."

Nephrite reluctantly tore his eyes away from the sky to look down at his leather shoes and her peach-colored sandals. The landing they stood on was of pale green glass, and shaped like a strange leaf. It seemed to float in midair, held in place only by the winding stairs that extended both up toward the castle above and down to another landing below, which hovered far above the moon's sulfurous yellow surface as a sort of viewing area. Even as they watched, a geyser shot hundreds of feet in the air, pelting the palace's shielding with molten silicate. The shield crackled in response, particles of light flaring out across its surface before settling back into a perfectly transparent window.

Nephrite sucked in a breath. "Okay, yeah. That looks a little dangerous." He had seen the silver dust of Earth's Moon. The red sand dunes of Mars. Lands that were still and sleeping in the absence of their former inhabitants. But little Io, capital of Jupiter, had never stopped pulsing in all the thousands of years that had passed. It still beat like a heart, generating heat and electricity. "And you used to _live_ here?"

Makoto reached up to smooth down the bodice of her gown. "Of course. It was the center of our power, and not just politically."

"But your people chose to live here. Here! One of the most actively volcanic places in the entire solar system. Where there are entire seas made of sulphur. Where geysers shoot molten rock so far into the atmosphere that it can be seen from Earth. Where the actual _ground_ has a _tide_ that causes it to swell a hundred meters up and down like the ocean."

She grinned down at the barren hellscape that was her homeland. He recognized the competitive gleam in her eye, normally reserved for sparring sessions and those infrequent late nights when she and Minako got too much wine in them and the deck of cards materialized from Rei's purse. "Sometimes the best power move is to say, 'I built my house on the edge of a volcano, and the gods themselves could not make me fear them.'"

He shook his head incredulously. "And here you question why I like sitting peacefully in the dark looking at all of this from a distance."

Makoto bright smile turned on him, and he found himself as pinned by it as he was by the planet that shared her name. "What, and miss a sight like this? Come on, let's keep pretending you enjoy danger. What's an anniversary without a little risk?"

He laughed, and brushed his fingers over the living pink roses she had pinned in her hair. He knew that for as long as those roses rested on her head, they would remain as fresh and alive as if they still grew in the greenhouse she kept inside Crystal Palace. "For you, any risk is worth it. So, my lady," He took her hand in his and bowed low over it, pressing a kiss to the backs of her fingers with the reverence of a holy knight beholding his queen. "All the world is yours to enjoy. Where shall we begin?"

Makoto laughed -- not the girlish giggle of an embarrassed teenager, but the hearty laugh of a wife indulging her husband's long-worn jokes. The orange glow of the planet above washed over them like a never ending sunset. It illuminated her hair with a golden halo that framed her face as she looked down at him, the chiffon of her dress draping softly over her. Her hand tightened around his, tugging him upright, into her arms. How casually she demonstrated her strength, even as she stood dressed like a delicate nymph. How easily he followed her lead, drifting into her sphere to wrap his arms around her. She planted a kiss on the tip of his nose. "It's your world too, today. I brought you here so you could enjoy the stars like a big old space nerd. So where do you want to go?"

He smiled beneath her kiss and planted one of his own right on her lips. "I want to go eat fancy cheese on one of those high towers and look at the stars. Like a big old space nerd."

She pulled away, her hand dropping to take his again. "Then come, my lord. Let me show you the palace of my birth."

She led him up the green glass staircase that wound in a lazy spiral up to the towering grand doors that stood open at the palace's entrance. They took their time on their climb, because neither could tear their eyes away from the view long enough to look down at their feet. Nephrite shifted his basket onto his elbow to run his hand along the glass bannister, which was ever changing into patterns of knotted vines or gently curving leaves. "All this time, I thought there must have been some magical secret behind your incredible legs. Now I learn that you just climbed 800 stairs a day."

She shot him a smirk that was half-hidden by the dark curls of her hair. "If you're tiring already, I can fly us to the top right now."

Nephrite paused outright a step below her to press a hand to his chest. "Madame, you wound me! This space nerd can climb stairs all day."

Her bare shoulder shrugged as she continued her climb unabated, her heels clicking on the glass surface. "Do tell me when you grow tired. I wouldn't want you to be too exhausted to enjoy your nerd time."

They paused to rest beneath the gates of Io Palace. The gates stood open to the endless sky, for who was there to bar from entry through the centuries? Nephrite set the picnic basket down on an ornate bench and moved to inspect one of the two grand statues that stood sentry on either side of it.

He brushed his fingers over the old Silver Millennium runes carved into the base. "That one says queen, I know that."

Makoto glanced up from where she had been leaning over to check the basket's contents, making sure nothing had been unsettled in the journey. "Really? How do you know that?"

"It's stamped on the monument they put up outside Serenitatis University on the Moon."

Makoto stepped closer, staring at him skeptically.

"...And it's on the label for Eternal Brewery. It's good beer, okay?"

"And educational, it seems," she laughed lightly, leaning down over the base to read the faded runes. It was an odd thing, to recall a language that was long dead. The script was nothing but symbols in Makoto's mind, some pretty drawings with no meaning to be drawn from them. But Jupiter stared through her eyes, and the letters became as clear as the planet overhead. "Queen Jove I."

"The first? Of how many?"

"Well," Makoto straightened. "I would have been the fifth."

Nephrite stared up at the towering castle. The scenery behind it was so overwhelming that it was easy to miss how impressive the structure was. Despite its grand size, it did not look like it had been built up, brick by brick, like a normal castle back on Earth. It looked like it had been molded and shaped. Towers and spires curved and arched into place at odd angles. It swelled and dipped into strange shapes, not at all rigid or precise like any building he expected. And all of it gleamed faintly, as though it was semitransluscent, much like the glass steps they stood on. "Only five generations to create all this."

"Four," Makoto corrected. "I was practically a child still."

He snorted. "You were much older than me, as I recall. A bit of a cradle robber, really."

She smacked his arm, earning an exaggerated wail of pain even as Nephrite continued to grin at her. "Do you dare to call me old, sir?"

"Why, my lady, I would never! I'm calling your past incarnation old."

She was glaring, but her smile said her false anger was already crumbling. "You are lucky that I love you."

"Every day of my life."

Makoto sighed longsufferingly. "Anyway, it's easy to accomplish much in a single lifetime if that lifetime spans hundreds of years."

"Yeah." He stared up at the towering statue. The queen in her billowing robes, crowned with sparks of lightning, did not deign to look down at the tiny people at her feet. "I guess we technically built Crystal Tokyo in only one generation, if we're counting ours."

Makoto began counting on her fingers. "And the Lunar colony. The Venusian colony. Mars will be up and running soon." Contrary to early expectations, Mars had taken the longest to prepare for settlement. The Lunar colony, of course, had access to an abundance of intact Silver Millennium technology and a newly revitalized Moon Palace, which extended the life-giving power of the Silver Crystal to its inhabitants. It was by far the oldest space colony that Earth boasted. Once they got floating islands figured out, Venus had been much more readily viable than Mars, with its breathable upper atmosphere and natural protection from radiation. Mars was in much worse disrepair, having become a barren desert in the millennia since it had been inhabited. It had taken years to repair the old atmospheric bubbles, as scientists and engineers struggled to replicate the technology.

He nudged her shoulder. "We'll be out here someday. The Io colony."

"Gods," Makoto laughed. "Those poor saps."

Nephrite glanced out again at the treacherous expanse of Io's surface. "This would be nothing like the colonies we already have, would it? It's not like an empty desert to fill. It's not even like Venus's floating islands. This place is actively hostile. You need to stay in a big protective bubble just to live. Space is trying to kill you from above and the planet is trying to kill you from below."

Makoto shrugged as she turned back toward the great doorway. "Oh, it's not all bad. Want to see my favorite room?"


	2. Chapter 2

The interior was formed of the same pale green glass as the balconies outside. The smooth, glistening walls were not so different from those of the Crystal Palace back home. But where the inside of the Crystal Palace was sharply faceted and crystalline, the glass walls of Io Castle were smoothly curved, with oddly organic curvatures and twists and swirls. It was as though delicate leaves had folded into place and frozen there. 

The grand hall just beyond the outer doors was dark, the dim orange glow of the planet outside all that illuminated the floor before them. Nephrite peered down at his feet, and realized that he could see what looked like thin bands of copper embedded just inside the glass, woven into intricate patterns like a great web. "Wait," she said, handing him her basket, "I know this part." 

Her peach heels clacked on the glass floor as she gathered up her skirt and raced ahead. No: her heels were crackling with static electricity, every step bringing with it a bright spark that snapped harmlessly against the insulating glass. Makoto wore a gown fit for a princess, and that princess was now returning home to a castle that had long awaited her presence. 

He followed at a distance, a picnic basket in each hand, as she faded into the dark interior of the hall, visible only by the occasional flash of electricity at her feet. 

"A-ha!" her voice called back to him. "Found it!"

"What were you looking for?" He shouted into the void. 

"You'll see. I think--there!"

He felt it first. The sudden flood of energy exploding out from the center of the hall, like a powerful wind that rolled over him with hurricane force and then was gone just as suddenly. Nephrite stumbled back, clutching both picnic baskets and feeling the warm wind rush through his hair. He was relieved that they had thought to securely wrap the wine bottles, so a little jostling did little to harm the precious cargo. He regained his footing in time to feel a faint humming through his shoes. And then a dim glow began to grow overhead.

Lanterns shaped like no flower Nephrite could name lit up in pinks and yellows all around the hall. They hung suspended from the high ceiling, or seemed to spring out of the walls themselves. The glass that their petals were formed of looked more delicate than what the walls were made of, encasing a light source that he could not quite see. 

Makoto knelt at the center of the room, her gown fanning out around her. She was like a flower herself, blooming in the heart of the great hall, her glowing sisters lighting up to greet her. She retracted her hand from the floor, where many of the copper bands met. "There we are! Now we'll be able to see our way and move about freely.."

His laugh echoed through the great hall in the space between them. "Quite the spectacular display just to turn on the light."

She grinned as she stood. "Why live in a giant energy conductor if you can't make it look nice?"

He took his time crossing the hall to meet her, because it was difficult to know what to stare at: up at the gently glowing lanterns above or the copper pattern in the floor below? He was fascinated by both. "So the glass insulates from the electricity. The copper conducts it. Is the whole castle made up of those two things?"

"Well," Makoto turned slowly around, staring up at the lights above them. A soft smile had crossed her face: she remembered being a child in this room. "I'm not an architect, but I'm sure they used normal materials too."

Nephrite finally came to stand beside her. He set the baskets down and coiled his arm around her waist. His voice echoed in the vast chamber even as he spoke softly. "What do you remember here?"

She surveyed the glistening walls, searching for some detail that he could not detect. Then she pointed at a lantern set mid-way up the wall. "That one there. See how it's missing its lower petals? I broke it. I was throwing a ball to Venus, and I threw it too high, and it smashed."

He chuckled. "What a troublemaker! Why does it not surprise me that it was you and Venus?"

"She goaded me into it!" Makoto protested, as though the incident had taken place very recently rather than an eternity ago. "She said I was throwing like…" she paused to consider the wording, "like a newborn fawn trying to roll an apple down a hill."

"Wow," Nephrite said in wonder, "Mina didn't even make sense in the Silver Millennium, did she?"

"She always makes sense, in a Mina sort of way."

He chuckled, but what few details he knew of her past life bounced around in his head, trying to slot themselves into order. "I didn't know the other girls ever visited you here."

"It was only the one time." In the dim glow of the flowers above, Makoto's hazel eyes nearly looked as ancient as she was now. Hundreds of years in one lifetime, hundreds in another. She grew up twice, fought and died many more times than that. And still she remembered the broken lamp on the wall. "We were meant to live on our home planets, the four of us. We would come of age, and then we would be assigned our roles as guardians of the Silver Millennium. But the Queen had a child, and everything changed."

In the years since they both were young and fresh on Earth, Nephrite had learned to recognize when it was Makoto he spoke to, and when it was Jupiter. He remembered the early tumultuous time after Crystal Tokyo's formation, when the distinction between them drew into sharper focus, Makoto's love of the world she feared she was losing at odds with Jupiter's determination to see her mission through. 

But now, standing in the childhood home of one life, wrapped in the arms of her husband of another, the edges where Makoto ended and Jupiter began had softened. She was always Makoto. She was always Jupiter. 

She shrugged. "The Queen never told us how Serenity came to be. All we knew was that one day, we were summoned to her side, and told never to leave it."

"So it wasn't planned? You being Serenity's guards?"

"The Queen was one of the original founders of the Silver Millennium. She was older than my grandmother, older than my great-grandmother. She traveled from beyond the stars, from a land we have no memory of, and brought life to these dormant worlds. She built an empire in the light of a new sun and forged peace between our planets. Could you blame us for believing that her reign would be unending?" Despite the weight of her words, Makoto's voice remained light. This was all an eternity ago. The sadness she once felt for the long-dead queen had been honed into a gentle, passing feeling. 

Somewhere inside Nephrite, a very old Terran soul scowled. The rest of him chuckled in response. "How like a Silver Millennial, to think the Solar System was lacking in life before you came."

Jupiter grinned back. "How very like a Terran, to believe everything revolves around Earth."

Nephrite picked up the baskets again, wordlessly passing one to her. They continued their stroll across the hall arm-in-arm while fairy lights glimmered around them. "Hey now, we had the sun and Earth's orbit nailed down well before my lifetime."

She laughed. "You know what I mean. Anyway, you're right. Terrans were here first. I think that's why we were forbidden from visiting Earth at all. We built our homes on worlds that you would never choose for yourselves, not when you had such a lush natural paradise at your feet."

A low rumble sounded outside as Io's surface shifted, likely spewing more boiling acid into the air. Oddly, Nephrite did not feel the vibration in the floor beneath them, and his inner physicist strained at the history lesson to question how the castle remained so still while riding on the back of a kicking moon. They must have had some system allowing it to hover just above the surface. He brushed the physics question away to focus on his wife again. "What, you don't think Terrans would have set up a nice little homestead out here?"

Makoto considered this. "Not unless they lost their home, like the histories say we did. That was well before my time." 

Nephrite made a mental note to beg Ami for access to Eternity Main. The histories were all preserved, somewhere, in that ancient supercomputer. He peered up at the back of the hall, where the glass walls formed deeper ripples that reminded him of roots rising up into the image of a great tree. "So, was this your favorite room?"

Makoto grinned knowingly. "Oh, no. This was just the front door. Come on."

She led him through long hallways that were just as alien and unfathomable as the entrance. Sometimes her hand took his and she tugged him along like they were children exploring a cave, giggling together and shouting in wonder at every turn. Nephrite had walked through many castles through the ages, but the layout of this one defied any logic he was used to. Halls twisted and doubled back on themselves, opened into rooms that themselves branched off into little pods with unclear purpose. Sometimes the glass, like the milky crystal of the Crystal Palace, turned completely transparent, so that walls, floors, and ceiling all became windows through which the planet outside gleamed its sunset light. Other times the walls themselves seemed to glow softly, so they were never in complete darkness.

Through it all, they never found evidence of people. Of course, they never expected any. The magic of this place had preserved the castle's structure and the protective outer shield: everything that had been imbued with power, that continued to draw power into itself and run through the copper that wove its way through the glass. But like the Moon Palace, like Magellan Castle in Venus's sky, like Phobos Deimos Castle on Mars, there was no trace of the former occupants or their softer possessions. No clothing or furniture, no books or scrolls or paintings. Makoto pointed out places where lush curtains and richly patterned rugs should have been, where rooms should have been filled with books and the glass softened by layered tapestries and vines woven across windows.

"It will be long gone now," she muttered as she stared out a window. The glass here gradually shifted from frosted green to transparent just above their feet, and remained crystal clear high above their heads, so that Jupiter filled their vision once again. The halls had been gradually taking them upward, winding in lazy circles that brought them in and out of the castle's interior. It was these times, when they circled close to the outer wall, that they could look out at the planet again. Despite their ascent, she insisted that they were nearing the castle's heart. "Just a big empty chamber will be left. But maybe you'll be able to picture what it used to look like." 

At the sadness in her voice, he reached out to the small of her back and rubbed his thumb over her spine. "Tell me about it. What kind of tree was it?"

She smiled gratefully at him and leaned into his touch. "Bigger than most trees that Earth could support. The trunk all twisted and lumpy like a bonsai. Dark green leaves. Oh, but the leaves were pointed all around the edges. Almost like stars. We called it a Sky Tree."

He smiled at her in the planet's light. "I bet you used to climb it all the time."

The smile she returned was wistful. "Climbed it. Played in it. Slept in it. I think perhaps I spent more time with that tree than I did in my own room growing up."

Nephrite laughed. "A far cry from your big city upbringing in this life. Was it the only Sky Tree that your people brought from the old world?"

She shook her head. "I think there must have been others. Planted on Europa, where the actual bulk of our people lived and farmed and created the resources we needed. But this tree… maybe it wasn't special before, but it became so here. In Io Castle. All that energy this castle produces, and they stored it there, with the Sky Tree. I think it must have soaked up much of the magic over time. Sometimes it felt like it knew me." Makoto sighed again and shifted away from the window, continuing up the hall they had been heading toward. "It will be nice to see the place where it was, anyway."

They had only been walking a few minutes more when Makoto froze in place. 

Nephrite, who had been trying to work out if there was some sort of mathematical sequence to the copper network in the glass floor, looked up in alarm. "What's wrong?"

Wordlessly, she pointed ahead of them, where the hall curved out of sight. There, where the wall met the floor, was something out of place. And that was odd, because nothing they had yet seen in this castle had been out of place. It was all glass and copper and magic and little else, but this… this was something different. This was a dark brown tendril. 

"How... that can't..." Makoto started forward numbly, approaching it like it was a small animal that might dart away or a trick of the light that might fade into nothing once she neared it. But even as she stepped closer, it remained solid and unmistakable. A small coil of tree root, curled around the corner as primly as a dog's tail. "There's no way. There's no way that tree has survived all those millennia."

Nephrite turned the matter over in his head. "We are standing in an impossible, magical glass castle orbiting around a gas giant. Is it really the most far-fetched thing we could encounter today?"

Makoto was shaking her head. "Maybe it's petrified, or... or something."

Somehow, that sounded even less likely than an organism surviving thousands of years. Io Castle remained intact because it was, in essence, still alive. The magic that pulsed through it preserved it. For a dead thing to remain untouched for millennia without the aid of magic, that would raise even more questions. What he said out loud was, "it's possible." When Nephrite took her hand, she clung to it like a lifeline. 

Together, they stepped around the corner. "Oh..." The sound burst out of her with a sob. What had once been a hallway just like any other they'd walked through -- beautiful and ornate but sterile -- was now choked with life. Tree roots ran along the floor, the walls, the ceiling. Some thinner than a finger and some as thick as her torso, with dark brown, rough bark. They were knotted and twisted with age, but Makoto could feel the life emanating off of them. This was a living thing. 

Makoto started forward. "I... I need to..."

Nephrite took the basket from her hand. "I'll be right behind you."

It wasn't like back in the great hall, where she'd run ahead with playful, childlike delight. Makoto burst into a run like it was an imperative, her skirt and hair whipping behind her.

The roots responded. Without any bidding from her, any slowing of her gait, they shifted around her, creating a perfect tunnel for her to run through unencumbered. The groan and hiss of trees shifting echoed through the hall. And the _smell_. The smell of life and sap and green flooded the hall, growing thicker the further she moved. 

It was not difficult for Nephrite to follow behind her at a slower pace. He picked his way through the wood tunnel, nervously watching to make sure it was not planning to collapse on him. Fortunately, the tree -- if that is what it was -- did not seem inclined to move again immediately. The roots were knitted closely together, forming an uneven floor over which he had to carefully step. The green glow of the walls glimmered between the gaps in the wood. It was not long before those gaps became smaller, as the roots became thicker and more numerous. Nephrite was forced to stoop as the branches and roots became larger and more numerous. Hardly any light remained to show his path, which continued to twist and turn just as the halls in the rest of the castle had, preventing much light from reaching him from either end. 

If this were anywhere else, he might have been nervous. A confined space, on a moon orbiting a distant planet, with no sign of his destination? None of those factors boded well. But this was Io Castle. This was Makoto's world. He could feel Jupiter's power here. He could feel Makoto ahead of him. She would keep him safe. Always, she kept him safe. 

All at once, the tunnel opened up. 

The room, if it could still be called that at this scale, was enormous. It must have taken up the vast bulk of Castle Io. Nephrite stood in what he could only describe to himself as an alien hockey arena, blinking in the greenish light. It was almost dizzying, after so long in narrow halls and the wood tunnel, to look up at the vastness of the place, which was as tall as it was wide. The walls crackled and pulsed with energy, so strongly that Nephrite thought he could almost hear it humming. 

And everywhere, _everywhere_ , was the tree. 

It was impossible to imagine that it was only one organism. He stood on a single root, which was wider in girth than he was, and as easy to stand on as flat ground. That root wound its way lazily down into the bottom of the cavernous space, where it was lost among thousands of others like it. The tunnel he had just exited was perhaps about three-quarters of the way up the side of the vast room, though it was impossible to tell how just far down the bottom must be, as it was filled entirely with masses of roots like this one. They snaked their way up the walls, covering them almost entirely and pushing into every crevice and opening they could reach. Doubtlessly, there were other halls choked with the roots just like the one they had come from. 

The trunk at the center of the room was an entity unto itself. Not a perfectly erect tower like the enormous redwoods of his homeland on Earth. It was gnarled and twisted like an old woman. An old, living giant who stooped imposingly over them. One could have carved out apartments all over that trunk without compromising the structure's integrity, if one dared to take a blade to such a magnificent entity. Crowning the old woman's head was a lush canopy of emerald green. Each starburst-shaped leaf was nearly as big as Nephrite's face. 

He found Makoto's shoes first, kicked haphazardly into the crook of a branch. He set the picnic baskets down and lined the shoes up together, their heels hooked on a thin branch to keep them neatly in place. 

Finding his wife required a longer journey along the winding tree roots up to the base of the tree itself. Only when he saw a pale peach chiffon hem peeking out from among the foliage did he know where to go. A cluster of low branches coiled around themselves, creating a natural hollow into which she had crawled. When he pushed aside the leaves, he found her curled up in the midst of them, like a wood nymph from a fairy tale. Her hand splayed out over the rough bark, a delicate green glow shimmering around her fingertips. Her face was nestled into her arm.

Were he a younger man, Nephrite might have been inclined to rush to her side, to put his hands on her back and offer soothing words out of a need to reassure himself that she was alright. At this age, he knew when to take things slowly. He sank down with his back to the trunk, so that she lay in her little nook just above him. He waited, watching the gentle sway of the leaves overhead. All of the castle was around them, humming its gentle electric hum, while the tree creaked and swayed of its own volition. 

Eventually, Makoto's hand dipped down to touch his shoulder. He reached up and clasped it with his own. For several long minutes, they remained that way, breathing in time with the tree's slow shifting. 

"It's not the same tree," she said at long last. Her voice was soft and distant. "That tree died when we did. But trees leave parts of themselves behind."

There were pines on Earth that only dropped pinecones in a wildfire, leaving behind a piece of themselves in the face of imminent doom. He leaned his cheek against her hand. "Like seeds?"

"Seeds that lay dormant for millennia. But then, 500 years ago…" 

He laughed softly. "Five hundred years ago, Neo Queen Serenity took the throne, and spread the light of the ginzuishou across the whole solar system. So these seeds, it hit them too." The ginzuishou meant life and healing and vitality, but they had never considered that it would restore life so far out here. Why would they? "So many centuries alone. It must have been lonely."

"It was," she said. "But living in the heart of Io Castle, feeding off the energy stored here, meant it could share in the castle's memories. It remembers everyone who has ever lived here. It remembers me."

He squeezed her hand tightly. "Who knew you'd find family all the way out here?"

The laugh burst out of her with a sob. "I guess that means I'd better introduce you."

They remained there for hours, in the green canopy. For him, it was long stretches of quietude, broken by occasional half-sentences uttered by her mouth, like she was caught up in a long conversation but only occasionally remembered to verbalize it. 

Only when she was ready did they pick themselves up and resume their journey skyward.


	3. Chapter 3

The top of Io Castle was made up of a series of grand towers. The tallest of these was in the middle, tapering into a pinprick point like an antennae. The viewing platform that Makoto led Nephrite up onto was slightly lower, but just far enough from the central tower that it did not hinder the view too badly. The platform itself looked like a grand glass leaf unfurling beneath their feet. 

They spread their blanket out beneath a sky that was reft in two. Jupiter's ever-shifting face loomed over them on one side, contrasting the endless black of space on the other. The neatly checkered picnic blanket looked oddly out of place in such an alien setting. At long last, they unloaded their heavy baskets of the rich bounty that had filled them.

The charcuterie was packed like little bento boxes. Rows of neatly-sliced cheeses and meats lined up in trays that separated them from the rainbow of sliced veggies and fruits that accompanied them. The cheese alone had been a topic of hot debate for months in the lead-up to this journey. Brie was a must, but which kind of brie? He preferred a variety from a small-batch farm up in Hokkaido. She swore by a French import that commanded a long history of authenticity. That choice alone altered the accompaniments greatly. The richer French variety demanded a more acidic fruit pairing, while the Hokkaido special would be suited to something sweeter. In the end, Makoto won, on the basis that the overall feel of the picnic would be enhanced by more fresh fruit to accompany the French brie. Nephrite's consolation prize was in getting to choose the next cheese on the list. And so their menu planning went: a negotiation to rival any that they had participated in between nations.

The variety of dishes was testament to their long years. A baguette and savory pastries from her time training under French chefs. Brazilian pasteis from his time as an ambassador in that region. Simple rice balls from her youth in old Tokyo. Little cucumber sandwiches just like the long-closed British tea house she was fond of used to serve.

Desserts were set aside in their own tin. Half a dozen different kinds of cookies from simple fare like chocolate chip to more complex flavors such as rose cardamom. Cakes cut into perfect tiny cubes and individually frosted, with stars and roses delicately piped onto each one. And though its namesake town had long ago slipped into the ocean, Makoto still knew how to make the Nanaimo bars of his home country. 

He held out the tray of cut fruit for her. "Grape, my lady?"

She was busy slicing the baguette on the small cutting board she had insisted on bringing. Makoto Kino would accept no less than freshly-baked bread at such an event as this. She had been up early, her hair thrown up in a messy pre-shower bun, clad in a bathrobe, punching out dough. She scrutinized the offering without relinquishing her hold on the bread and knife. "A strawberry, if you please."

He fished out a bright red strawberry slice and popped it into her waiting mouth. She closed her lips around his fingertip, green eyes lit up with mischief. 

"Saucy," he whispered, and leaned forward to kiss her strawberry-sweet lips. 

She giggled beneath the kiss. "Hey, I'm allowed. There's no busy castle full of people to witness us here."

He chuckled, pulling away just enough to meet her eyes. "What happens on Io, stays on Io."

Makoto laughed, just as he hoped she would. "In that case, care to join me for a drink, stranger?" 

"Ah, my lady is ready for her wine. Come then, let us sample this vintage!" He reached into a basket and produced one of the bottles that they had painstakingly wrapped up and carried all the way up the castle corridors. 

Makoto leaned over his shoulder to read the label as he set about removing the cork. "Argentina?"

He glanced at her expectantly. "Summer, 2473?"

She hummed to herself, watching him work the corkscrew. "The trip where I got air sick? Some romantic you are."

Nephrite smiled as he worked. "Hey, that's not the part I remember. I remember dancing for hours and walking back to our hotel on a hot summer night, looking at the stars in the middle of an empty street."

"...waking up in the morning with sore feet and a wine hangover." Despite her dry tone, Makoto set about unwrapping the stemless wine glasses, betraying her actual thoughts on hangovers and the causes thereof. 

"Well," he poured the wine into each glass as she held it, the coordination of their movements so practiced that not a drop was spilled. "Care to join me in a repeat performance?"

"Oh," she handed one glass to him and held the other up. "To sore feet and hangovers?"

Laughter permeated his voice. "To stars. And good food. And old trees and storms."

Her smile was so affectionate, her eyes bright with memories. "To one more good year."

"Or five hundred more. I hope."

She leaned toward him, reaching around his glass to straighten his tie with her free hand, the fingers lingering on his shirt collar. "Five hundred more years. Five hundred more trips."

He gave her hopeful puppy dog eyes. "Five hundred more cookies?"

Her hazel eyes met his, absolutely serious in their sincerity. "That just goes without saying."

He tipped his glass, lightly clinking it with hers. "Happy anniversary, my dear."

"Happy anniversary, you big sap." She leaned even closer to him, planting a wine-wet kiss on his mouth. 

***

When they'd had their fill of cheese and wine, Nephrite threw himself back on the blanket, hands behind his head. The long curls of his hair gathered around his face like a mane. He lay with his back to the planet, facing the half of the sky that was all stars, letting the darkness fill his vision. Sol looked like a pale, distant beacon from here. Not quite so small or dim as the other stars dotting the sky, but nothing like the warm sun he had come to take for granted on the planet of his birth. 

Makoto moved to flop down beside him, resting her head on his shoulder. His arm cradled the back of her neck and coiled around her shoulder, his hand coming to rest on her bare arm. They both lay in silence, taking in the vast expanse of stars above them. After a moment, she whispered, "it's different, isn't it? Being on this side of the telescope."

He puffed out a breath. "It's basic math. I know that 776 million kilometers of distance, give or take, is going to make it look a bit different from 150 million kilometers. It's the simplest thing. But somehow, my mind can't make sense of it. How can there be a world where the sun looks so small?"

Her hand reached across to brush the one resting on her opposite arm, their fingers knitting together. "The first time I saw Earth's sky in the day, I was overwhelmed. Everything was so bright. That blue… I don't think I'd ever seen a blue like that before."

He glanced at her, awash in the dim golden twilight of the planet behind them. "Amazing how even colors work differently on another world."

She smiled, before returning her gaze to the sky. "Can we see it from here? Earth?" 

He cast his gaze around the night sky, orienting himself. Here, at least, he could be confident in some things remaining unchanged. The stars, so distant from the solar system, were steadfast from Mercury to Pluto. The same constellations he had always known shone down on them here. But Io had them tilted at a slightly different angle, so still it took him a moment to work out which part of the familiar pattern he was looking at. 

"There." The arm that cradled her head shifted, reaching past her cheek to point up at the faint blue dot in the sky. "Even from here, it's a little bit blue."

Even after he'd pointed it out, she struggled to differentiate one little spark of light from another. She tilted her head against his arm, squinting until she pinpointed the right one. "Amazing. Everyone we love, everywhere we've been, all in that tiny speck."

He tilted his head against hers. "Every city. Every little cafe. Vancouver. Paris. Crystal Tokyo. What time is it there, nearly dinner time? The queen and king are probably skipping out of their last meeting early to eat."

She smiled up at the sky. "They're serving crepes in the kitchen today. Serenity's probably already there, begging for extra strawberries."

"That cafe down by the water just got their summer menu in. Hydrangeas are in season at the flower shop. Earth keeps moving forward every day, while this place hasn't changed in thousands of years."

"All of that is happening on what looks like a little bit of stardust." The words came out breathless. That was what they were, here on the picnic blanket. Tiny and breathless, in a universe too immense to behold. Hanging onto each other, the only source of warmth on the top of a cold glass pillar towering high above an ever-shifting volcanic moon. When she spoke again, her voice was stronger. "It's still out there. Do you feel it, from here?"

Nephrite closed his eyes. "I feel them. My king, and Earth. They're like another star, tiny and flickering in the darkness."

Makoto found his hand again and gripped it. She was a grounding force, always. Now, when he felt untethered in the great expanse of darkness, she was an anchor. "If you read it from here, the way you read the stars from there, what would it say?"

He chuckled, dipping his head to rest his cheek against hers. "It could take me months to answer that. The language of the stars is much about the culture of the people who behold them as it is about the stars themselves. For instance, your planet's pole star isn't Polaris, like Earth. It's Zeta Draconis. It seems significant, doesn't it, that Jupiter looks to the dragon for guidance. But other cultures have viewed Zeta Draconis as something other than a dragon's tail. In Arabic, it was called Aldhibah, the wolf. Chinese astronomy placed it as part of the Purple Forbidden Enclosure. What is it that guides Jupiter, then? A creature of great power? A fierce beast? A unified protective force?"

Makoto smiled up at the stars as she felt the lecture building. "You are going to tell me that it's all three."

"Of course I am," he confirmed, "and then I'm going to tell you that none of that matters as much as what the people of Jupiter thought Zeta Draconis represented. The stars don't control a world's fate. They interact with it, push and pull with it. The same way that Earth's moon pulls at the ocean's tides. The same way that Jupiter's gravity pushes and pulls at Io's surface, and Io is always pushing and pulling back. What did the people of Jupiter think Earth represented? What did they name it? What stories did they build around it and tell each other before bedtime?"

She curled into him, the warmth of his jacket pressing into her bare arms, the hem of her gown settling around her ankles. Her bare feet nudged against his socks. "It's a little different, I think. Earth named their stars naturally, told their own stories about them without any outside influence for countless generations. From what I remember, the first settlers of Jupiter's lunar system arrived with the Silver Millennium's founders. They knew what Earth was before they had time to imagine anything about it." 

He considered this. "So science ran ahead of myth. No stories at all, then?"

"Well…" she hummed contemplatively. "I remember a sort of fairy tale. Not quite about Earth. It was about the sun. Long ago, a young star called Sol looked out upon the darkness, and she found herself very lonely indeed. So she took the flames that lit up her crown, and she cast them down onto the dark worlds around her, that they might grow and become her children. The flames only fizzled out, or they set the world alight and burned up its surface. Only on Terra did the little flame descend safely. It found itself in a world too verdant and lush to burn away, but with ample fuel to sustain it."

The stars twinkled distantly above them as her voice carried him through the story. The planet Jupiter was a radiant glow at the edge of their vision, always present but never the same, the stormy churn of its surface constantly shifting. He trailed his hand up and down her arm as she spoke. "The little flame remained there for a while, basking in this new world. But soon people came upon it. Some tried to douse the flame, for they thought it was an evil spirit. Some tried to capture it for themselves, for they saw the value in its light. But there were also those who protected the flame. To them, the flame gave the gift of its light and warmth."

He chuckled lightly. "Of course."

"But in doing so, the little flame could not hold itself together. It ultimately faded away, leaving behind pieces of itself in the people it shared its light with."

He hummed to himself, brushing his fingers up and down her arm. "Sounds like a fairy tale. Sweet but ultimately sad."

"I think it's supposed to be a lesson in kindness. Plus it's only sad if you think the flame is gone. I like to think it just became something bigger, by spreading through the people like that."

"And Sol? She lost her last child, didn't she?"

"Or the people became her children."

He hummed thoughtfully. "Ah, that is a hopeful way of looking at it. Sol set out to create companionship but instead found it in the people on Earth who nurtured her creation."

"And… nothing is ever really gone, if it's loved and valued. It just changes, or it becomes part of something else."

He watched the little blue star. A light in the dark that he had only ever known as the ground beneath his feet, a rock to turn his gaze away from. "Like a tree growing from the dormant seed of its long-dead ancestor."

She took a long breath and let it out slowly. "Yeah. Like that." In the distance, they could hear the great bubble surrounding the castle groan and crackle as it was pelted with molten rock. The ground far below them grumbled to itself with seismic voracity. 

A faint buzz vibrated through Nephrite's sleeve. Makoto, already having captured his hand in hers, fished beneath his sleeve to reveal the face of his watch. It was an expensive model, a gift from an anniversary some eight years previous. Set into the gold case was an analog face made of shimmering dark blue aventurine glass, like a starscape captured on his wrist. She poked at the crystal exterior, and the entire face vanished behind a digital projection indicating that an alarm was going off. 

"Ah," he moved to sit up, which by extension meant that she did too, using him as a pillow as she was. "Time already!"

"Time?" She eyed him with mixed suspicion and amusement. "I didn't know we were keeping to a schedule. Time for what?"

He reached for the watch with his other hand, hugging her in the process while the digital screen flicked from the alarm to a playlist. The old fashioned, practically archaic tune that began to play was unmistakable. "It's time to dance, obviously."

Makoto dissolved into giggles as she began to recognize the lyrics to Fly Me to the Moon. "I should have known you'd come up with something cheesy like this."

"There is nothing at all cheesy about old Frankie." Nephrite released her to slip his leather shoes back on. He stood upright, the great expanse of black sky framing him as he looked down at his wife. 

She smiled up at him as she reached for her own shoes,. "Oh honey, you have the taste of an old grandpa. Small Lady would be roasting you into the ground for it if she were here."

Both of his hands went to his chest as if struck. "My dearest. My love. Are you saying you would no longer deign to dance with me, now that I am old and out of touch?"

Makoto finished slipping the delicate straps around her ankles and held her hands up for him to take. "I said nothing of the sort."

He gripped both hands and smoothly pulled her to her feet. "Some situations simply demand a classic. If this is the first song that Io has heard in millennia, shouldn't it be someone great like Sinatra?"

"I can't argue with that," Makoto laughed. They stepped together with a practiced motion, as if they had rehearsed it so many times before that they hardly had to think anymore about how they fit together. His hand knowing just where to rest comfortably on her waist, hers automatically tucking his hair behind his ear to avoid snagging it when she gripped his shoulder. They stepped into the music as one, needing only the subtle shifts in one another's stance to signal when the dance had begun. 

Hundreds upon hundreds of balls and galas had been thrown in the Crystal Palace by now. Some of them stiff and formal, filled with delegates and officials from all over Earth and beyond. But other ones were more intimate, more casual, just a time for the friends of the King and Queen to enjoy each other's company. It was those dances that the two of them remembered most. When all decorum gave way and they had only each other to look at. 

Nephrite's eyes glimmered at hers as they turned a slow circle around the middle of the green glass platform. "Remember our first dance lesson?"

Makoto snorted. "When you nearly tipped me head-first into a table?"

The grin was already spreading across his face. "I prefer the part where you nearly broke my arm." 

"Let's be fair," she scolded. "I would have merely dislocated your shoulder."

Nephrite laughed. "Of course. My mistake." 

Nephrite led the dance, but only in the sense that when he raised his hand aloft, it was she who dipped beneath it and twirled, her dress fanning out around her. After so many dances such as this, so many twirls and dips and turns, it was difficult to disentangle which of them spurred the other on. Whose hand lifted first, whose weight shifted to one side, bringing the other along. They danced with a casual ease that only centuries of practice together could bring, never once checking whether their feet might collide or if their grip was steady. 

Their bruises and squished toes had already been earned, and long faded, leaving only muscle memory and a long-developed trust. That when he cast his arm out, she would already be turning away from him, waiting to be reeled back. That when she sent herself plunging backward, he would be there to hold her steady. 

He dipped her low and held her there, earning an amused laugh from her. She reached for the lapel of his jacket and tugged, both pulling herself up and him further down, closing her mouth over his for a kiss. She pulled away just enough to whisper, "nerd."

His eyes glittered with the kind of amusement that told her he had yet one more stunt planned. "My love," he whispered back at her, "look up."

Still cradled in his arm, her own arm coiled about the back of his neck, angled nearly parallel with the floor, Makoto finally let her eyes drift to the side of his face. He had positioned his back to the great planet so that, for her, it seemed to fill the entire sky with its gentle orange glow. Makoto let herself once again be taken in by the overwhelming sight of Jupiter's churning sky. 

She gasped. "Oh…"

In the hours since they had arrived, Io had made its slow orbit around Jupiter, passing one mighty spiralling storm after another. But through their long trek from the castle's base to its pinnacle, one storm had been absent from their view. 

The great red eye rose up on the horizon, so enormous in scale that only the top half could be seen, arching gracefully up over the castle's towers. Bands of red and white folded in on themselves even as they watched, the storm twisting lazily inward. 

Without a word, Nephrite had pulled Makoto back to her feet, allowing her to stand and stare at the grand sight. He moved to stand behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. "It really is red," he breathed in wonder. "I've looked at so many photos of it, but to see it up close…" 

"It always has been," she confirmed, her words equally breathless. "I remember staying up late sometimes, waiting to see the big storm rising through my window."

"So that's the big red eye." His voice was nearly reverent in its tone. "Always watching over your lunar worlds on Io and Europa. A monstrous hurricane that could swallow the entire Earth and more."

Makoto was silent for a moment. "To us, it was a heart," she said finally. "The heart of Jupiter, always beating."

"A heart," he repeated, his arm tightening around her waist. "Expanding and contracting with the seasons. Ebbing and flowing, yet somehow steady for eons. Yeah, I can see that."

She laughed softly, resting her hands over his. "You planned this, didn't you? The timing. You knew when the orbit would line us up just right."

"Well," he chuckled into her ear, "I am a space nerd. Orbits are kind of my thing."

She leaned back into him, as the planet above them turned the light a deeper shade of orange, like a sunset in reverse. "You're my kind of nerd." The red spot loomed ever higher as they watched, a titan of a storm that had raged for centuries. 

As the edge of Jupiter's red eye rose to align with the highest point of Io Castle's central tower, a low hum began to shiver through the air. Makoto tensed up, sensing the change in a way that Nephrite could not. "Is something wrong?" he asked, gently smoothing down her hair. 

"No," she said distantly. "Not wrong. It's just…" She paused, as if listening. "We're about to see what this castle was really for." Even as she said it, the exterior of the central pillar was beginning to glow. Thin bands of light pulsed and rippled beneath the glass walls, racing along the copper circuits. 

The thunderclap made Nephrite jump, so loud was it that he felt it rumble even through his chest. Lightning snapped onto the tip of Io Castle's central tower and remained there a moment, a single current of electricity stretching from the tower right up into the sky, toward the planet. 

No, not just toward the planet. Toward the massive storm that they had been staring at. The red eye itself. 

"Your people used the storms," Nephrite muttered in wonder. "That's where all this energy comes from. The moon Io creates electric currents by cutting across Jupiter's magnetic fields, which creates electricity in Jupiter's atmosphere. Your people turned around and found a way to harvest it."

"And then we stored it all with a giant tree," she said matter-of-factly. "Just to be extra about it."

"Hold on, I'm still trying to wrap my head around you growing up in this interplanetary power plant. I need to be taking _notes_ on this, calculating the level of energy we just witnessed..."

"Speaking of energy," Makoto untangled herself from his arms and turned to face him. "Got enough left for another dance?"

Nephrite paused in what was about to become an intense session of calculus and the soft smile returned to his face. "Just one more?"

"Again." Makoto tugged him back out into the middle of the platform, her shoes clicking on the green glass, her eyes glimmering with the warmth of Jupiter's glow. "Again and again. I want to dance with you until we can't dance anymore. Until we're just names carved into statues and only the Sky Tree remembers the sound of our feet."

He lifted both her hands in his and pressed his lips to the knuckles of each, one at a time. "As my queen commands."

Beneath the watchful eye of Jupiter, their dance resumed again.


End file.
